Recommended actions

While the Inquiry does not recommend major changes to the overall regulatory system, it believes action should be taken in the following five areas to improve the current arrangements and ensure regulatory settings remain fit for purpose in the years ahead:

Improve the regulator accountability framework: Australia needs a better mechanism to allow Government to assess the performance of financial regulators. The Inquiry recommends establishing a new Financial Regulator Assessment Board (Assessment Board) to undertake annual ex post reviews of overall regulator performance against their mandates. It also recommends that Government should provide more clarity around its expectations of regulators, including its appetite for risk in the financial system, while regulators should develop better performance indicators. These new arrangements should ensure, among other things, regulators give stronger and more transparent consideration to competition and compliance cost issues.

Improve the effectiveness of our regulators: Australia's regulatory system will continue to be challenged by the pace of technological change. Especially in payments and financial markets, new business models are challenging existing regulatory frameworks. The emergence of new technology is placing demands on regulators to be more flexible, and raising issues relating to identity, privacy and cyber security.Australia's regulators need the funding and skills to meet these challenges into the future, including encouraging innovation through appropriately graduated approaches.The Inquiry recommends that ASIC and APRA should both be strengthened through increased budget stability built on periodic funding reviews, and greater operational flexibility. ASIC, APRA and the payment systems function of the RBA should also commit to six-yearly capability reviews. These exercises should ensure they have the required skills and culture to maintain effectiveness in an environment of rapid change, as will the recommendation in Chapter 3: Innovation that Government create a new public-private collaboration mechanism to facilitate regulatory change in response to innovation.

Strengthen ASIC: Instances of misconduct and consumer loss in the financial system have prompted questions about the effectiveness of consumer protection, as well as the adequacy of ASIC's resources and the design of the regulatory framework in which it operates. The public expectation is that ASIC will act as a pro-active watchdog in supervising all financial services providers. However, in practice, ASIC has a very wide remit but limited powers and resources.The Senate Economics References Committee's report on ASIC's performance was released just before the publication of the Interim Report. The Interim Report indicated that the Inquiry would consider the Senate Committee's recommendations in the lead-up to its Final Report.10Several of the recommendations in this Final Report are consistent with those of the Senate Committee. The Inquiry has recommended some fundamental changes to the regulatory framework governing the financial services industry (see Chapter 4:Consumer outcomes). These measures are part of a broad shift in Australia's approach to consumer protection in the financial sector — away from primarily relying on disclosure and financial literacy.The Inquiry has also recommended changes in how ASIC approaches its consumer protection role. In particular, the Inquiry considers that ASIC should devote more attention to industry supervision, including more proactively identifying and weeding-out misconduct. It has also recommended several measures to strengthen ASIC, including better funding, enhanced regulatory tools (including the proposed product intervention powers discussed in Chapter 4: Consumer outcomes), stronger licensing powers to address misconduct, and substantially higher criminal and civil penalties.In light of the significance of these changes, the Inquiry recommends that ASIC should be the first regulator to undergo a capability review, along with the funding review that would take place under the recommendation for increased budget stability. This would help to ensure ASIC has the appropriate skills and culture to adopt a flexible risk-based approach to its future role. Its overall performance would also be subject to annual review by the proposed new Assessment Board.

Rebalance the regulatory focus towards competition: Not surprisingly, regulators have increased their focus on resilience in the wake of the GFC. However, the Inquiry believes there is complacency about competition, and that the current framework does not systematically identify and address competition trade-offs in regulatory settings.Although the ACCC is responsible for competition policy in the financial sector, this is part of its broader economy-wide responsibilities. Furthermore, the ACCC is not responsible for reviewing how decisions by other regulators affect competition. It is not always clear how APRA and ASIC balance their core regulatory objectives against the need to maintain competition. Policy makers and regulators need to take increased account of competition when making regulatory decisions, while ASIC should be given an explicit competition mandate. Periodic external reviews of the state of competition should be conducted, including assessing whether Australia can reduce barriers to market entry for new domestic and international competitors.

Improve the process of implementing new financial regulations: Since the GFC, Australia's financial system has been influenced by new global standards and the increasing scope and complexity of cross-border financial regulation. Substantial regulatory change has resulted from international developments and decisions made in major offshore financial centres, concurrent with a large number of domestically driven changes, especially in financial advice and superannuation.Although there is no evidence to suggest Australia's compliance burden is substantially larger than in jurisdictions overseas, work commissioned by the Inquiry suggests that improved regulatory processes could reduce industry costs and lead to better outcomes. Specifically, the Inquiry recommends that Government and regulators adhere to minimum implementation lead times and monitor impacts more thoroughly post-implementation.